Meng Tian

Meng Tian commanded the army with which the First Emperor of Qin drove the Xiongnu out of the country south of the Yellow River. The Shiji puts his force at one hundred thousand men. The Han Shu puts it at several hundred thousand.^[1] The chapters of the Shiji on the First Emperor and on Meng Tian himself give three hundred thousand.^[2] Some scholars tie the larger figure to old Chinese convention and take an army of one hundred thousand as the normal size for such a campaign.^[3] Duman was chanyu at the time. Meng Tian was the general the Xiongnu could not beat.^[4] The Xiongnu returned to the river only after his death.^[4]

The frontier he inherited

By the time Qin conquered the six states, three walls already stood along the northern edge of China. Qin had built its own wall against the Hu, the Shiji’s name for the peoples of the north. It had done so after it took Longxi, Beidi and Shang. Zhao had built a wall from Dai along the Yin Mountains to Gaoque. Yan had built one from Zaoyang to Xiangping.^[4] One modern count dates Qin’s wall to about 324 BC and its completion to about 270 BC. The same count dates Zhao’s wall to about 300 BC and Yan’s to about ten years later.^[5] The Shiji adds that in the time of Li Mu, the Xiongnu did not dare enter the border of Zhao.^[4]

The campaign

The First Emperor then sent Meng Tian north with one hundred thousand men to strike the Hu. Meng Tian took all the land south of the river.^[4] A modern account dates this to 214 BC.^[6] The Xiongnu fell back into the Yin Mountains north of the Ordos.^[6]

Duman could not stand against him. He moved north.^[4]

Meng Tian made the river the frontier. He built forty-four walled towns facing it. He filled them with convicts who had been moved there as a garrison. He opened a straight road from Jiuyuan to Yunyang. Wherever a mountain barrier, a ditch or a ravine along the frontier could be repaired, he repaired it. The repairs ran from Lintao to Liaodong, a length of more than ten thousand li. Then he crossed the river and held Yangshan and Beijia.^[1]^[7] The chapter on the First Emperor tells the same campaign differently. In 214 BC Meng Tian drove the Xiongnu north-west, went east along the river from Yuzhong and set up thirty-four walled counties where the Yin Mountains begin. He built a wall along the northern bank, took Gaoque, Yangshan and Beijia, and settled convicts there.^[7] The same modern account says these were the years in which Qin joined its own wall with those of Zhao and Yan into one line.^[6]

The same account puts the force that guarded the wall at slightly over three hundred thousand men. Its headquarters were in Shang commandery, on the edge of the Ordos.^[8]

After his death

The Shiji and the Han Shu both give the sequel in a single sentence. More than ten years after Duman’s retreat, Meng Tian died. The lords rose against Qin. China fell into disorder. All the convicts Qin had settled on the frontier left again. The Xiongnu were free of pressure. Little by little, they crossed the river and met China again at the old frontier works.^[1]^[9] On the modern account, Meng Tian was forced to take his own life in 210 BC. Then the defence of the Ordos fell apart.^[8]

By then, Bagatur had killed his father Duman. He had made himself chanyu. He took back every piece of ground that Qin had taken from the Xiongnu under Meng Tian. He set the frontier with the Han on the old river forts, as far as Zhaona and Fushi.^[4]

The forts outlasted Qin. The Han general Wei Qing took the same country in 127 BC. According to the Shiji, the Han then built Shuofang. They also repaired the old Qin works that Meng Tian had made, with the river as their defence.^[4] The wars that followed are told in their own article.